Lists of information are pervasive in modern computing. Such lists can present information for any of a variety of reasons related to business computing, social networking, or the like. And, given the increasing availability of storage space and computing power, the size of such lists can grow to large proportions. For example, it is not unusual to have a list with thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even more items. While storing such lists is typically not a problem, presenting them is.
It is well known to display only part of a list and allow a user to scroll within the list to see additional content. However, the mechanisms for doing so were typically not designed to handle very large lists. For example, in a web scenario, items on a web page are typically stored as part of a Document Object Model (“DOM”). Because recurring processing is performed on items the DOM, if the DOM contains a large number of items, resources can be consumed to the point where presentation of the list becomes nonresponsive, slow, or freezes. There is therefore room for improvement.